Once again, Strauss takes us deep into the psyche of ancient history in an exciting, twisted tale that is sure to please.
Master historian Strauss (History and Classics/Cornell Univ.; Masters of Command: Hannibal, Alexander, Caesar and the Genius of Leadership, 2012, etc.) zeroes in on the few years surrounding Julius Caesar’s assassination and delves into the strengths of the characters involved.
The author traces five of the best sources: Nicolaus of Damascus, Plutarch, Suetonius, Cassius Dio and Appian. Everyone knows what happened on the ides of March, but Strauss goes deeper in his investigation of how Caesar had ill omens and decided not to attend the senate meeting he had called. It was Decimus, longtime supporter, friend and fellow diner the night before, who literally led Caesar by the hand into the senate. Of the conspirators, Decimus was the most important and the most vilified. Cassius and Brutus completed the leadership of the plot. They were supporters of Pompey and the Republic against Caesar during the recent civil war, and each had his own ambition. Brutus “wanted to kill Caesar without launching a revolution or disturbing the peace—an impossible ambition.” The author shows us a side of Caesar beyond the military genius, a man despised by Cato, Cicero and all who longed for the Republic. Ostensibly a non-noble populist who pushed for change and championed the poor, he also was wise enough to keep his army and the citizens loyal with land grants and money. Even the great Caesar was capable of making mistakes, and Strauss points to three that sealed his fate: He disrespected the senate, flirted with monarchy and dispensed with the people’s tribunes. Caesar, now a perpetual dictator, god, and a man dismissive of the senate and the people, was headed for a big fall. The author explains how Caesar’s funeral was even more dramatic than Shakespeare’s version—especially Mark Antony’s eulogy.
Once again, Strauss takes us deep into the psyche of ancient history in an exciting, twisted tale that is sure to please.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6879-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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